Pink, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift are massively popular artists Down Under. That statement is true. And it’s underselling these pop giants. Their most recent tours in these parts helped lift the entire live music market to all-time record results in 2018, according to newly-published trade data.
During the calendar year, the number of tickets issued, revenue generated and the average ticket price for live performance events reached its highest point since Live Performance Australia began publishing data in 2004, according to a new report issued by the trade body.
Pink is the queen of the stage in Australia. The Philadelphia singer spent over two months in Australia and New Zealand, and played 42 arena shows, on her 2018 Beautiful Trauma Tour, produced by Live Nation. Almost 560,000 tickets were sold for that run, Billboard Boxscore reports.
Those figures are dwarfed by the numbers put up by Ed Sheeran on his Divide Tour. Produced by Frontier Tour, Sheeran’s stadium trek sold more than one million tickets, smashing the benchmark set by Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms run in 1986.
Thanks to those major international tours and others, Australia’s live performance industry generated total ticket sales revenue of almost A$2.2 billion ($1.51 billion) in 2018, an increase of 14.8% from 2017, according to the 2018 Ticket Attendance and Revenue Report. It’s the first time the live performance sector has hit the A$2 billion ($1.37 billion) milestone.
The rise in revenue was a result of a 5% gain in the total number of paid tickets in 2018, coupled with a 9.3% lift in the average ticket price to A$99.03 ($68), the LPA reports.
The “Contemporary Music” category, which covers rock, pop, EDM, country and hip-hop concerts, is the engine room for the live sector. During the reporting period, contemporary music posted the third highest growth in revenue (32.2% to A$1.1 billion) and sixth highest growth in attendance (32.2% to A$1.1 billion) amongst all categories, which include comedy, classical and musical theater.
The growth was “primarily driven by tours of internationally renowned artists Pink, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift, Celine Dion, Katy Perry, Bon Jovi, and Foo Fighters,” the report reads.
The annual study captures ticket attendance and revenue data from ticketing companies, self-ticketing venues, event promoters and Australian Major Performing Arts Group (AMPAG) companies, and drills down into the performance of each Australian state and across genre categories.
Ernst & Young compiled the report on behalf of LPA. Download it here.